A love letter to "Parks and Recreation"

To the creators, writers, actors, and crew of “Parks and Recreation:”
When news of your show first started showing up on NBC commercials
between “The Office” and “30 Rock,” many of us got nervous. The faux-documentary style, along with the appearance that it was about a group of strange personalities working together in a probably un-enjoyable environment under an eccentric boss played by a well known face from the comedy world, let us to believe that this was going to be an arbitrary and redundant knock-off of “The Office.”

How wrong we were.

You are now in your fourth season, going strong and making us all laugh. You are better than ever “The Office” was, and are possibly the best thing on TV right now, with the possible exception of “Modern Family.” Indeed, I see things on your show each week that I believe prove it to be not only great comedy, but revolutionary television.

I’ve enjoyed “Parks and Recreaton” ever since its first season, but it’s only been within the past month or two that I’ve begun to realize how special the show really is. Unlike “The Office,” your show likes each of its main characters. It doesn’t have the cynical outlook that makes each joke at the expense of someone, which is so prevalent in “The Office.” These characters enjoy working together and being around one another. It’s clear that your show believes in something better than laughs taken from awkward or offensive situations: it believes in the good (and the hilarity) that can happen when a community of people work together and help one another.
However, you don’t whitewash the characters, regardless of how much you care for them. These are real people with real problems and real flaws. Tom is generally selfish, and a major player. April is hopelessly negative. Andy often doesn’t listen and gets in the way frequently. There is not one character on the show who doesn’t have some kind of flaw that would make them difficult to be around at one point or another. You never let those flaws define them, though. Tom’s womanizing comes off as endearing, and we get the feeling that he communicates in the languages of “doin’ it” because he just doesn’t know how to express deeper feelings in another way. We see a playfulness in April that comes out with almost everyone, but especially with Andy and Ron. Andy’s childish excitement and naïveté make it difficult to be frustrated with him for long about anything. Ron cares very much for everyone in the department. For all his talk about how well Leslie treats everyone, he has made sacrifices for and offered sage council to almost all of the people working under him, particularly Leslie, April, Andy, and Tom. What got me thinking about how remarkable the show is, though, is what you did with Leslie in one of the more recent episodes, “The Smallest Park.” We have always known that Leslie is headstrong and will often “steamroll” people to get what she wants. She does this to several people in this episode, and Ann calls here out it (again demonstrating a healthy friendship in which honestly and forgiveness are important). What’s caught my attention most was that Leslie acknowledged what she was doing, understood that it was hurting people she cared about, and expressed a desire to change and acted on that desire. Question: how rare is it that in any show, let alone a sitcom? Answer: extremely rare, if not altogether unheard of. In “30 Rock,” for example, the characters of Liz, Jack, Tracy, and Jenna all have their flaws, but those flaws haven’t gone anywhere and are not likely to go anywhere because they are what make the show work, and it’s hilarious and that’s fine for that show. It would have been easy to keep Leslie as the “steamroller,” and it probably would have worked, too, but you took a major risk by having the lead character in your show address one of her deepest flaws head on. Now she has to change, and in addition to having one of the funniest shows on TV, you have a situation comedy in which the situations are not going to be approached by in the same way all the time by this character. She is growing and moving forward. It was a huge risk to take (can you imagine “30 Rock” if Liz decided to stop being pathetic or if Jack began to focus on people instead of money?), but I am glad you did, and it started paying off even in that episode. And when conflicts like this arise, the characters treat one another with grace! They forgive each other. You clearly believe that there is something more to be found in comedy than just laughing at the discomfort of others.
Another major strength of the show is that its main focus is not romance. From the first episode of “The Office,” we knew that Jim and Pam were going to end up together, and the show has never been about anything other than that relationship. This worked until they got married, and then there was no more tension between the two of them and it just became about how cute they are together, which can only last for so long. In “Parks,” you made friendship, not romance, the relational center of the show, which has allowed us to get the know the characters as individuals. This makes it much more exciting when two characters enter a relationship (Leslie/Ben, April/Andy). We care more when we like the people for being themselves, not the couple for being a couple.

I’ve been talking a lot about how the show works dramatically, but it is a feat comedically as well. If there has ever been a cast assembled from so many actors with strong backgrounds in stand-up or improv, I haven’t heard of it. There is no weak link in the cast, and the chemistry they have with each other is unbelievable. I hope the day comes where at the very least Amy Poehler, Nick Offerman, Aubrey Plaza, and Aziz Ansari have all received some sort of award recognition for their work, but frankly all cast members are brilliant and deserve it.

It is refreshing and glorious to see a show that knows how to be funny without being cruel, and is about people who care for one another.


All my love,
Erik Naydiuk

PS
Those are the general reasons why I love your show. Here are some more specific ones:
-How you handled the obligatory wedding episode that all shows must at some point have.
-How you handled the obligatory death episode that all shows must at some point have.
-The ending of “Citizen Knope.”
-Jerry Grgich (the butt of many jokes, but clearly loved.)
-Ron f*****g Swanson
-Tammys 0-2
-Burt Macklin, FBI
-Jean Ralphio
-Leslie’s sugar addiction
-Ron and April’s relationship
-Leslie and Ann’s relationship
-Joan Callamezzo
-Perd Hapley
-Crazy Ira and the Douche
-The universal hatred of the library
-etc
-etc
-etc